ts@uwasa.fi (Timo Salmi) (04/15/91)
In article <1991Apr14.090235.1151@agate.berkeley.edu> c60b-1eq@e260-1c.berkeley.edu (Noam Mendelson) writes: : >Written by Phil Katz? In any case, there are more efficient compression >programs available, such as Yoshi's LHa--a promising high-speed, high- >compression program for which source code is already publicly available : This is a subject that pops up at regular intervals, and it is far from that simple. Recall a few facts. There is an enormous overhead involved in converting files from one archiving method to another. Just consider the number of files that FTP sites and BBSes have. All methods have their _practical_ pros and cons, such as 1) Zoo is the established method of the binary postings in comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d with all the accessories geared to that choice. The problem with zoo is that it is rather lax, and not very easy to use beyong the simple basic fucntions. Importantly, from a moderator's point of view, zoo has a -test switch. 2) Zip is very popular at BBSes. Zip files can easily be datestamped to correspond to the latest file within the archive, and it is reasonably tight. There is also the authenticity feature. On the negative side there is no official Unix zip yet, only an unzip. Importantly unzip has a test switch -t for archive integrity. 3) LHarc is very tight. On the other hand there is no LHa for Unix (only LHarc). The Unix LHarc lacks the important test switch. On the PC scene lharc makes self-extracting archives with by far the least overhead. 4) Arc is lax, but it has a good Unix version, and is easy to use. Furthermore I find its one-line format of file comments the most useful of the lot. It lacks the datestamp correction facility. The consequence at our site. We use all the major methods at garbo.uwasa.fi, but with a preference for .zip files. Advice for PC users: get a good shell like /pc/arcutil/shez61.zip. Note: Followups to be directed to comp.compression. ................................................................... Prof. Timo Salmi Moderating at garbo.uwasa.fi anonymous ftp archives 128.214.12.37 School of Business Studies, University of Vaasa, SF-65101, Finland Internet: ts@chyde.uwasa.fi Funet: gado::salmi Bitnet: salmi@finfun